Saturday, August 30, 2008

A new exhibition explores the differences between the words "naked" and "nude" when it comes to describing art.

(Sir Kenneth) Clark's answer was that nakedness "implies some of the embarrassment which most of us feel in that position", while nudity shows "the body re-formed". The writer and critic John Berger saw things the other way around. "To be naked is to be oneself," he said. "To be nude is to be seen naked by others."

When I think of the word "naked", it implies vulnerability, to be without covering. You are naked in the shower, when you are born, when you visit the doctor, when you are in the locker room at the gym. When I think of the word "nude", it suggests a purpose beyond mundane nakedness, such as to be a nude art model, or a nudist, or to pose in Playboy magazine. Is being seen a requirement for nudity, as Berger suggests? If you are clothes-free on a remote beach all by yourself, are you naked, or are you nude? If you spend the day alone in your home without any clothing, are you naked, or are you nude?

I think both Clark and Berger are partially correct. One can be naked without embarrassment, such as when in the bath, and one can be nude without being seen. It's the old adage reapplied: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound? Of course it does. The absence of a witness does not mean that nothing happened.

When it comes to nudism, the word "naked" does not seem to apply at all. The nudity is purposeful, it's social, and it's generally mandated.

Now, discuss amongst yourselves. Is the woman in the painting above nude, naked, or neither?

Some people in Boston, including the Mayor, are "outraged" at the cover of the free Weekly Dig magazine.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was not impressed. "It's totally irresponsible to have a photo like this in a paper that's widely distributed around our city," Menino said. "Young children can see it. It's not what we should be showing our young people."

Photo? PHOTO? If the mayor thinks that this cover is photo-realistic, I'd hate to see the world through his eyes. And what could possibly be dangerous to "young people" about this cover?

The Weekly Dig's creative director, Tak Toyoshima, stands by the team's decision to use the picture as the magazine's cover. "The point of the cover is to celebrate summer, the end of summer," Toyoshima said. "It's the last hurrah, get all your ya yas out and just have fun." Toyoshima says they weren't trying to offend anyone. He said they have all kinds of cover pictures and consider it art. "Something like this is not to be sexual at all," he said. "They're nude, but there's nothing sexual happening."

But the Mayor Menino is not deterred, and is looking for ways to censor the magazine by removing dispensers from city buildings, citing the cover as evidence of the "deterioration of society". I agree. Prudish attitudes like that held by the Mayor are clearly a step backwards for free thinking, rational people.

Back in the 70s, I would go out to clubs with a friend. He and I would joke that we were going out "to be seen". We used the same line when we went to the mall. "Let's go to White Flint to be seen". In t-shirts and jeans, nobody ever noticed us.

Toby Hatchett has a column today that explores our penchant for seeing, and being seen. Her fascination with a smelly and ragged bicycle man, as well as with a 60-ish woman wearing a white and gold bikini and high-heeled sandals, makes for interesting reading.

I found myself wondering why I looked so keenly at her mostly naked body. Why did I look so hard at biker man in his mostly naked body?

Some years ago, at a family nude beach on the northern coast of Germany, everyone was naked, old and young and in-between. After a few initial moments of puritanical American panic, I shed my clothes and fit right in. What would have been odd there was if someone walked by in a suit and tie and hat! No one paid any attention whatsoever. It was just what it was.

To a certain extent, everyone is an exhibitionist, and a voyeur. Hatchett admits that she loves to look at interesting people who "go wild and shock" her, and she herself has pink hair, for no other reason perhaps than to simply be seen.

So it's significant when the only time she is "invisible" is on a nude beach in Germany. It's precisely the lack of clothing which makes everyone blend together. As the tag line of this blog states: nude, we resemble one another.

When Hatchett encounters her bicycle man and bikini lady, she spends a lot of time looking at them. Perhaps she didn't stare, but her eyes were drawn to these people. In a nude social situation, everyone looks, but nobody stares. In fact, people make a conscious effort to look each other in the eye. Everyone seems to have a cloak of invisibility.

If Toby Hatchett walked into a nudist resort, I guarantee you that the only significant physical attribute that would be remembered by people who saw her would be her pink hair. Being seen requires drawing attention to yourself. Being nude draws attention to who you really are.

Friday, August 29, 2008

A Pasco County caseworker has blocked two children from having visitation rights with their grandparents who live in the Lake Como "nudist colony".

A spokesperson for Eckerd Community Alternatives acknowledged that there was no legal reason for the action and stated "...if there is any concerns about any situation, we always err on the side of the safety and well being of the child."

Arguments will be held before a judge next week. If children are prevented by the courts from visiting a nudist resort, it's a precedent that threatens all family nudism in America. AANR and TNS should be all over this one.

A man in the UK is facing a new fear each day for a month in order to raise money for Discovery camps, which challenge teenagers to overcome fears. When Grant McNeil posed nude for a life drawing class, he rated the fear factor as being only a 4 on a scale of 10.

"I feel like I could take on the world and I think the hardest part of this challenge was staying in the same pose for 10 minutes.

"It's a real shame that I look at the photos and instead of going `oh my God I'm naked', I go, `oh my God I need to get to the gym'."

Judge James Michie sentenced the teenager to pay $600 in fines, to undergo counseling, to submit a DNA sample for a state database, to pay for potential counseling for victims in the case - and to stay away from cell phones with camera options.

Michie told the 16-year-old lacrosse player to inform his friends that trading nude photos of themselves and sending sexually oriented text messages are crimes.

"For some reason, a lot of young people think sending inappropriate texts is not a big deal," Michie said.

"It's dangerous . . . next thing you know, there you are on YouTube," he said. "You need to communicate with your peers that this is a serious crime and it needs to stop."

The teenager was sending photos of his "abs and groin" to a girl he was dating. They continued to date for a month after the sexting began, and the girl apparently never told him that she had a problem with what he was doing until he was hauled into the Principal's office.

The boy has been undergoing "treatment" through Mormon Social Services. Treatment for what? It's clear that he was sexually frustrated, desperately looking for love in apparently all the wrong places. What kind of girl receives sexual advances for a full month, doesn't tell the advancer that she is not interested, and then takes action through school authorities? I'm not saying that this boy was not being a pig, but all she had to do was tell him to drop dead.

One of the problems in getting authorities involved in personal sex lives is that people tend to forget how to solve their own problems. Instead of working things out with neighbors, we go to court to file lawsuits. Instead of confronting people over sexual harassment, we call the police.

So what happens to this kid now? He was originally charged with three felony counts. He is reported to be "absolutely ashamed" of what he did. Instead of understanding, he is receiving punishment. Instead of finding release for his sexual frustration, he is being forced to bottle it up even more. Every time this boy looks at his own penis he will be reminded of only shame.

Society has to come to grips with this sexting phenomenon, which is not trafficking in child pornography, it's experimentation during sexual awakening. Instead of destroying the lives of healthy teenagers, we should be ratcheting up sexual education to meet the demands of the technological age. With cell phones, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and all the other means of instant communication available, there is no way to stop the distribution of sexual material, especially with teenagers.

Even if you took away all the computers and cell phones, sex would still find a way. In ancient times there was lover's lane, or parking, or skinny-dipping. Teenagers were, and are still, having sex in their parents' homes and cars. The difference was that there was no photographic evidence to alarm the older generation. I shudder to think what my parents would have thought if they came across a nude photo of my girlfriend on my cell phone - they would have freaked. The only way I could have taken a nude photo back then was with a film camera, which would have required processing at my local drug store, or in a darkroom.

I don't think they were stupid enough to think that I wasn't having some sort of sex in my late teens, but if they didn't have to see it, or talk about it, then it was not a problem.

When the Utah judge exclaimed that being on YouTube was dangerous, he didn't bother to explain why. We are steeped in the mindset that photographic images of ourselves are somehowthreatening our very existence. This will very quickly change as nude images of people become ubiquitous. It's the end of privacy, folks, and these cell phone photos are merely visual evidence of what was once part of a teenager's private world, and the older generation simply cannot handle it.

Natick Police Lt. Brian Grassey said his department was tipped off about the event. “They were cautioned that, dependant on the conduct during this event, that should they violate the law, they were subject to arrest,” he said. Grassey, who confirmed two police officers monitored the store yesterday, said the charges could have ranged from disorderly conduct to open and gross lewdness.

Another story on the Boston situation has this great quote from a customer:

"I'm a nurse, so I see nudity all the time," (Lou-Ellen) Barry said. "The human body is about as generic an item as you can imagine because everyone has got one."

So exclaimed a customer at the Lush Cosmetics store in Scottsdale, as employees stripped down to only aprons and shoes to promote the fact that their products are sold "naked" with no packing materials. Story with video here.

**********************************************************************http://www.naturistaction.org**********************************************************************Copyright 2008 by the Naturist Action Committee, which is responsible for itscontent. Permission is granted for the posting, forwarding or redistribution of this message, provided that it is reproduced in its entirety and without alteration.

The Naturist Action Committee is pleased tomake you aware of an important new development in the battle to preserve a portion of San Onofre State Beach for clothing-optional use.

A California Superior Court has ruled today in favor of the Naturist ActionCommittee (NAC) in its lawsuit against the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR). DPR had attempted earlier this year to bypass state law regarding changes to public regulations, as it moved precipitously to endthe traditional clothing-optional use of a small portion of San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County.

In May, DPR announced its intent to begin citing beachgoers for nudity at San Onofre, a site that has been used byskinny-dippers and nude sunbathers for decades. DPR's most recent timetable called for citations to be issued after Labor Day. However, in today's ruling, the court declared, "Dept of Parks must comply with the provisionsof the California Administrative Procedures Act before it makes any changes in its enforcement."

Further, the Court said, "until the administrative process is completed, Parks shall maintain the status quo, andenforce the Cahill Policy as it has done since its issuance and subsequent interpretation by the Harrison letter, at Trail 6 in San Onofre State Beach."

NAC filed the lawsuit in July as a result of the Department'srecent attempt to put an abrupt end to traditional clothing-optional use at San Onofre State Beach. Specifically, DPR had attempted local recision of its own long-standing policy of managing clothing-optional usage in StateParks. That policy, issued in 1979 by then-DPR Director Russell Cahill, set out a procedure for management of clothing-optional portions of State Parks. The regulation not only addresses nudity in State Parks, but also allowsfor designation for clothing-optional areas.

The Cahill Policy, as it became known, was cited as Park Department policy in a California Superior Court case (People v. Bost, 1988) and was affirmed in 1988 as theoperational administrative procedure for California State Parks in a letter written by then-DPR Deputy Director Jack Harrison.

The California Department of Parks and Recreation had argued recently that the Cahill Policydoes not constitute a public regulation, and that DPR's sudden attempt to change public policy without public input was immune from the requirements of the State's Administrative Procedures Act.

The ruling in NAC'slawsuit was issued today, Wednesday, August 27, 2008, by Judge Sheila Fell of the California Superior Court for Orange County. The Court declared that "the Cahill Policy, as interpreted by the Harrison letter, is aregulation."

Represented by attorney Elva Kopacz, the Naturist Action Committee maintained in its lawsuit that in abrogating the Cahill Policy, the Department of Parks and Recreation had violated the state'sAdministrative Procedures Act. The APA requires state agencies to go through prescribed procedures, including public hearings, before making changes to regulations or public policies that have the force of regulations. The DPRdid none of those things and had claimed to be immune from the requirement.

Joining NAC as petitioners are Friends of San Onofre Beach (the local TNS-affiliated naturist group), as well as individual beach users AllenBaylis and Gerda Hayes.

The Naturist Action Committee is in this for the long haul. Today's win is gratifying, but no one should imagine that California's Department of Park and Recreation will simply go away. NAC filedits lawsuit only after its attempts to negotiate with DPR had been rebuffed. Looking forward, NAC will renew, in good faith, its offer to negotiate.

DPR may choose to proceed with its attempt to ban nudity at San Onofre.If the Department follows the law, there will be public hearings on the matter and other opportunities for the public to be heard. You can count on NAC to make you aware of those developments.

Meanwhile, the Court hassaid that DPR must operate the Trail 6 area at San Onofre State Beach as it did before it attempted to ban clothing-optional use there.

NAC says: Enjoy the beach!

WHAT IS NAC ASKING YOU TO DO?

This is a NAC Update. No additional letters to DPR Director Coleman are being sought at this time. However, NAC does request that you:

1)Stay informed. NAC will continue to issue Action Alerts, Advisories and Updates on this issue as circumstances require. Look for them.

2)Keep going to the beach at San Onofre, and keep using it in the traditional clothing-optional manner. CA Parks is attempting to intimidate beachgoers into simply evaporating. We must NOT allow that to happen!

3) Respect the beach. DPR has attempted to characterize the beach at San Onofre as place that accommodates illicit sex. Please stand up for proper clothing-optional beach etiquette!

4)If you are approached by a ranger on the beach or in the parking area at San Onofre, make a detailed note of the encounter, including the date, the time, the ranger's name and what was said. E-mail your account to: sanonofre@naturistaction.org

Do not be combative orconfrontational, but you may make it quite clear that you are taking notes.

MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES

Additional information and links are available, along with this NAC Update on the web site ofthe Naturist Action Committee.

www.naturistaction.org/sanonofre

PLEASE HELP NAC TO CONTINUE HELPING NATURISTS!

NAC is committed to the defense of traditional clothing-optional use ofpublic land. NAC does not hesitate to hire lawyers and lobbyists when it's necessary, but that can be very expensive. NAC does not have a membership roster on which it can simply assess dues. NAC relies entirely on thevoluntary support of people like YOU.

Won't you please send a generous donation to:

NACPO Box 132Oshkosh, WI 54903

Or call toll free (800) 886-7230(8AM-4PM, Central Time, weekdays) to donate by phone using your MasterCard, Visa or Discover Card. Or use your credit card to make a convenient online donation: www.naturistaction.org/donate/

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A judge has issued a final ruling in the battle for San Onofre Beach, siding with the naturists who argued that the state failed to hold a public hearing before banning nudity in the area. It is not clear at this time whether the state will appeal or take further action.

“This came out of left field last week when they told the girls and us parents about the change. Our jaws just hit the ground,” said Tammy Ihle(CQ), whose daughter is a freshmen football cheerleader at Monroe High School.“We’ve spent more than $400 on the uniform and she worked hard and earned the right to wear her uniform at school,” Ihle said. “The cheerleading uniform skirts have always been short…If the uniforms are OK for crowds at a pep rally or football game why (aren’t they) all right for classes?”

The cheerleaders have a long-standing tradition of wearing their uniforms to class for Friday football games and other events. Their current uniforms can still be worn provided the girls wear leggings or long shorts under their skirts, which must be no higher than 3" above the knee according the new dress code.

Dr. Leslie Seppinni offers some advice for those afraid of stripping down in front of others.

If you’re scared of undressing in front of others, try this mirror exercise to gradually fall in love with your own body: Over the course of a month, take ten minutes a day to REALLY look at yourself in the mirror. For the first week, study just your face and find three things you love about it. In the second week, study from the breasts up and find another three. Week three focus on your lower torso and in week four progress to your entire physique, finding three different parts you love, or even just like, each week. Journal your progress and then accentuate those traits!! Love your eyes? Play them up with eyeliner! Love your hips? Try a fitted waist to show them off! Feeling sexy in your clothes throughout the day will lead to more confidence when you’re in the buff.

"I unwrapped my work and they looked at it and told me it was inappropriate and they would not hang it in the exhibition,’’ Ms Tuckey, a TAFE art teacher, said.

"They said that school children would be seeing the exhibition. I couldn’t believe anything as simple as a nude drawing of a female adult that is not full frontal ... would not be accepted. It was a rude shock.

"I think some of them are ignorant of what art is, this is art and this is an art exhibition. I’d say (to the council) grow up.’’

As I've said before, shielding children from all nudity is harmful to body image and self esteem. How are children supposed to learn that their own bodies are beautiful and natural when they are not allowed to see nude artworks, which celebrate the body, but are allowed to see sexualized imagery on television, in movies, and in advertising, which exploit the body for profit?

The New York Times has a generally positive article today on the San Onofre Beach case, pointing out that while acknowledging that there have been some problems with sexual behavior, it's been nudists who call 911, and it's been nudists who have been handing out fliers warning against unacceptable behavior.

“There’s nothing sexual about a nude beach,” said Tracy Verrett, 31, one of a handful of newcomers erasing some tan lines. “People think you are like a swinger or something, but it’s not that at all.”

Instead, said Gerda Hayes, 64, relaxing in the buff on a chair, it is like any beach outing — socializing with friends, soaking in the rays and getting closer to nature.

“As you can see, some people are heavy, some people are short, some are tall, some are skinny,” Ms. Hayes said. “But we are all the same. You are not identified with the designer clothing you are wearing or not wearing. We are all accepted for what we are.”

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

If it seems like I mention pornography a lot, it's because I find it fascinating that America embraces the porn industry, letting it flourish on the Internet, in hotels, in video stores, on cell phones, and on cable television, yet women are not allowed to sunbathe topfree in most areas of the country.

I mean, people are being paid to do just about every sex act imaginable, and it's being taped and sold to just about anyone (I'm not anti-porn necessarily, I'm just saying). And I think it's safe to say that the primary purpose of porn is to serve as masturbatory material. One would think that in a country where strip clubs are embattled, nude beaches are threatened, television and radio is heavily monitored and censored, that porn would be a target for family values crusaders, prosecutors and law enforcement. It was enlightening to come across this article in the Village Voice about a porn shoot in California.

Just like "regular" moviemaking, in Los Angeles as elsewhere, filming porn requires you to apply for and receive a permit from the city (or county). If you're in a residential neighborhood, the neighbors are notified in advance, and sometimes you also have to reach out to the community or homeowners' association in advance. There are rules about when you can film, where you can park, etc.—and for porn, you always have a clause that says nudity and sex cannot be visible or audible to people outside the house.

By regulating the porn industry, the government is actually sanctioning and protecting it.

I don't know, all nudists and naturists want is a little place in the sun to be nude and free. If the government wants regulation, perhaps nudity in one's back yard, or on a stretch of beach, or on a hiking trail, can be done by permit. If the state can make a few dollars, perhaps nudism would begin to gain favor. It always seems to come down to the almighty dollar these days, anyway.

Most of the material was of naturism and included a video of naked children aged between seven and eight helping their father put up a Christmas tree.

Referring to Allen's police interview, prosecutor Ms Rutanah said: "He said he woulddownload pretty pictures of children in bikinis and not child-abuse images because he was not into children getting hurt."

It was also stated that Allen didn't think he had done anything illegal because the images weren't abusive but police explained to him that he was breaking the law by getting sexual gratification from the material.

Better round up all those retail catalogs which show children in swimsuits and underwear.

Look, any grown person who is getting off on images of children is sick, and in need of help. There has to be more to this story than is being reported, because this man must have exhibited some perverse behavior to draw the attention of authorities in the first place.

But it is disturbing to think that someone can be arrested and thrown in jail simply for possessing naturist material. This man has been charged with downloading "indecent photos and movies" of children, there appears to be no formal charge against him for "sexual gratification", although that appears to be police justification for bringing the case. Out of the over 18,000 images found on his computer, only a handful were considered "level 2" offensive, and only one was found to be "level 3".

Children have always been a part of nudism and naturism. A systematic removal of young people spells doom for the lifestyle. Making this an "adults only" practice will move social nudity into becoming a more sexualized activity. Children keep adults honest and help to check bad behavior. When the kids are away the adults will play.

Angye Fox and the folks at Caliente Resort will have their way - the merging of nudism with the swinging lifestyle. No more "family-friendly" because there will be no more families.

Australia's Advertising Standards Board decided that the word "sex" used in a billboard ad for erectile dysfunction drugs is harmful to children.

The board said in a report yesterday it had been persuaded to change its earlier decision by the continuing volume of complaints about the advertisement - 220 since it first appeared in February last year - and by increasing community concern about the sexualisation of children.

"The board considered that while this advertisement does not sexualise children, it brings the issue of sex before them," it said.

"The board noted that debate within the community about the sexualisation of children has crystallised community concern about the unsolicited exposure of children to advertisements dealing with sexuality."

As part of the National GoTopless Day, more than 50 women staged a topfree protest at California's Venice Beach.

"It's not right that men in the USA are allowed to walk around topless, and not women." Women who bare their breasts in public face, according to the state, a hefty fine or even prison. The demonstrators said they just want to be able to go topless on the beach, and sun their breasts at open air swimming pools.

Ah, college students. At once brilliant, and at the same time, hopelessly stupid.

On the smart side is PSU student Elizabeth Burke, who fought and won in court to have charges of public lewdness dismissed. Burke was arrested last spring for participating in the school's annual Mifflin Streak.

And on the dumb side is Ryan E. Pfister, a major in information sciences and technology and economics, who writes:

As a community, we choose not to allow "lewd" acts in public. Most people, I think, would agree that includes public nudity. If judges start to think that's not the case, maybe we need to make the law more specific. Either way, I'm not going to support this civil rights movement. Because one person's right to streak is overruled by something else: everyone else's right not to see that.

The problem is that Pfister completely contradicted himself earlier in the editorial by stating:

Burke's lawyer, Stacy Parks Miller, argued that for the open lewdness charge to be applicable, somebody had to be offended or alarmed. Shockingly, the prosecution was unable to find someone in the area (i.e. a college student) who was angry about seeing a naked girl.

If you are going to base an argument on the fact that "everyone else" is going to be offended, you cannot preface it by stating that the prosecution could not find a single person who was offended.

Pfister seems to be worried about where to draw the line as far as streaking is concerned, as if thousands of students are suddenly going to strip down and run around the classrooms because of this court case. This is prudishness at its most naked. Notice that Pfister uses all the old cliches, such as "family-friendly" and "offensive" and "lewd", and compares the streaking to activity at a strip club, yet he offers not one single fact to support his position. Prudes can never actually explain why nudity is harmful, because there is no evidence that anyone anywhere has ever been harmed by the sight of a nude human body.

Thankfully the court decided that Elizabeth Burke committed no crime by running nude as part of a college tradition. The law has ruled that nude is not lewd, but prudes like Ryan Pfister can't handle the truth, they continue to pound sand.

At San Onofre State Beach, complaints about nude 'n' lewd excess at Trail 6 are testing the laissez-faire policy that has ruled for more than 30 years.

Like tokers at outdoor rock concerts, naturists have grown to expect a public zone of tolerance at this clothing-optional refuge...It's a basic principle: Once you grant a de facto right to someone, it's awkward to take it away. Once again, we're facing the conflict between a dubious, but time-honored, activity in public and the public's right to enjoy public land without being faced by what, in any other public context, is patently offensive and illegal.

It's an interesting analogy, but it fails on one major point: nudity is legal in the home, on some beaches, at resorts, in locker rooms, etc., but pot smoking is illegal everywhere, except for a few places where it can be used for medicinal purposes. We are all born naked, and we are all still naked under our clothes. The idea of swimming or sunbathing while wearing clothing is a 19th century invention. Nudism is a 20th century movement to return people to a more healthy and natural state, and the folks who frequent San Onofre beach to be nude in nature are only trying to reclaim some of that lost freedom.

This issue goes beyond mere "de facto" rights, it's a human rights issue, where government forces people into a specific dress code. Some jurisdictions have been passing laws and ordinances which ban the wearing of saggy pants, or prohibit the showing of underwear, and ultimately these actions will likely fail the constitutionality test.

Gradually society has been undoing its mandates on dress codes. During Victorian times even the sight of a woman's ankle was considered scandalous. Both men and women wore full body woolen swimsuits when bathing at the beach. It wasn't until the 1930s that men regained the right to be topfree in public. In the 60s the topless bathing suit for women was introduced, which began the era of topfree sunbathing in Europe. In America, today, women have the right to be topfree the same as men in several states, such as New York and Ohio. And on the beaches, people can be nearly nude, required only to cover genitals, anal areas and nipples.

Jenkins concludes that we have an imperfect system, which outlaws certain activities, yet turns a blind eye in certain situations. This is basically the "safety in numbers" maxim that I have professed. If enough people join in, there's nothing the law can do to stop them from doing nearly anything. Take the porn industry, for example, which is purported to be as lucrative as all major US sports leagues combined. Even though people are being paid to have virtually every kind of kinky or perverse sex for money and profit, the government can do nothing to stop it. Porn is on cell phones, on the Internet, in hotel rooms, in dorms - accessible from just about anywhere, anytime.

Instead, it's the soft targets like nude beaches which get attacked, giving people the illusion that government is "protecting" the public from "offensive" behavior. It's the John Ashcroft move - cover up the bare-breasted statue in the Justice Department with expensive taxpayer-funded curtains as an empty symbolic gesture to the prudish masses.

So the assault on San Onofre has less to do with "de facto" rights than it has to do with government oppression and the loss of human freedoms. Yes, it's an imperfect system, but that does not mean we have to accept it, and it's our duty to work to make it better.

According to historians in Belgium and Peking, it became customary for Greek athletes to exercise naked in the sixth century B.C. They point out that "gymnasium" and "gymnastics" come from the Greek "gymnazein" -- to train naked.

"... nudity had no negative connotation for the Greeks," they write at ancientolympics.arts.kuleuven.be. "(They) were proud of their naked bodies. They considered public nudity as a way to show their superiority over other people.

"According to some scholars, this superiority lays in the ideal of self-control: The gymasion was a source of sexual excitement for the athletes themselves. Through self-control, they could look calm and balanced."

Not all athletes were enamored of competing in the altogether, however. Whether out of modesty -- or, perhaps, comfort -- some chose to wear a thin, leather thong called a kynodesme (literally, "dog leash") to restrain the penis. One end was tied tightly around the foreskin while the other was attached to either a waist band or the base of the penis. You'll find this depicted in scenes on ancient Greek pottery.

I've noted several times on this blog that nudism can only become accepted in society if more people support and participate in the lifestyle. With only 50,000 members, AANR really has little political clout. Same with TNS. I've said that if hundreds of women begin going topfree at beaches, the police are not going to arrest them all. This is how Spencer Tunick succeeds - he gets thousands of people out in the open violating public nudity ordinances, yet the police actually work to protect his installations.

This maxim has been proven by the situation in Portsmouth, England. The laws on nude sunbathing were relaxed five years ago, nudists are becoming more plentiful on the beaches, and there is nothing the police can do.

Gill Jacobs, 60, complained to police about the nakedness and said she was stunned to be told nothing could be done.

She said: 'It's completely unacceptable. These people are just lying around completely naked in full view, some even walking along the waters edge.

'They shouldn't be allowed to parade their bodies in public and it's not very nice or fair on other people, especially children. But the police and council just turn a blind eye.'

Treavis McCall, treasurer of the Meon Shore Chalet Owner's Association, said: 'It's really not on anymore.'It's getting so bad that people can no longer just take a walk along the beach without seeing someone naked. It makes me so cross.'

A Vancouver man admitted that he had exercised poor judgment when he stripped his 3 year-old son for a World Naked Bike Ride event. The man was arrested and later released after many of the cyclists descended upon the police station in protest.

Not all the cyclists who made the trip through Vancouver's tourist-crowded downtown core supported the protest.

One cyclist who declined to give her name said the man took off the boy's pants.

She said most of the cyclists did not agree with the situation and would not be protesting.

"The leaders of this event do not support what the guy did," she said.

Bernadette Barton has written a couple of academic studies about women strippers, and has found our society to be far more sexist than she originally thought.

Young women today flounder in a toxic cultural swamp, measuring their self-worth against the representation of the jiggling booty on a pole. My undergraduate female students learn that to be hot, to be a star, to be seen on YouTube, to get attention from guys is the pinnacle of their power and achievement. I labor to squeeze inside their 20-year old heads -- past the Pussycat Dolls, Tila Tequila and Rock of Love -- to introduce the radical idea that their time might be better spent discovering a cure for cancer, entering politics, fighting poverty or researching renewable energy sources than obsessing endlessly about their bodies.

Ultimately, Barton found that interest in strippers seems to begin and end on the pole. Her current book has sold only 2300 copies.

I saw an article about a gal who had been operating open drawing sessions at a bar in Adams Morgan. I had belonged to a nudist lodge in California, so that wasn't an issue. I contacted her, and . . . Halloween 2000 was my first experience. I turned 60 just days before that.

Quammen takes his job very seriously and has founded the Figure Models Guild of Washington DC in order to raise the standards of the profession. He also is demanding on the students in his classes.

So I'm sitting there, and I can hear these people yakking and yakking and yakking. So finally . . . I just told them to shut up. And one said, "You shouldn't treat me that way." I said, "You're acting like a child; I'll treat you like one. I'll leave if this keeps going on." It didn't.

When I was in my early twenties I shaved off all my pubes. I spent the next few months avoiding any sort of nudity in front of others. Nob...

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